Comments on: My Thoughts on Startup Weekend Redmondhttp://blog.kylemulka.com/2009/09/my-thoughts-on-startup-weekend-redmond/
Thu, 02 Mar 2017 22:34:44 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2By: David hazelhttp://blog.kylemulka.com/2009/09/my-thoughts-on-startup-weekend-redmond/comment-page-1/#comment-91074
Sat, 05 Sep 2009 17:54:12 +0000http://blog.kylemulka.com/?p=515#comment-91074Well, I pitched clientrating.com, Which lane and I had already built the prototype for using drupal, but nobody was interested(except for this one guy that changed his mind because he wanted to work on something that got more votes).

Ended up working with some startup weekend veterans (and some n00bs) on BItter.

]]>By: Roy Lebanhttp://blog.kylemulka.com/2009/09/my-thoughts-on-startup-weekend-redmond/comment-page-1/#comment-91070
Fri, 04 Sep 2009 07:33:51 +0000http://blog.kylemulka.com/?p=515#comment-91070@Kyle: We’re not that far off — but it’s more interesting to point out the differences. For me, I learn in a variety of different ways and I learned more at this weekend than the last one. I also had more fun and accomplished more. I think, overall, the teams accomplished more than last time. I don’t know that the competition helped, but it certainly didn’t hurt. And I know that for many teams there was a buzz in the room around the prize. I like you and respect you, but I have to say that I am a bit bothered that you weren’t there, but you’re indicting the event.

I actually did see the poster, but I didn’t find them distracting and that wasn’t what I was referring to. At SSW2, there were multiple people whose sole purpose in being there was to recruit. They didn’t join a team. They just recruited. I got sucked into a recruiting pitch at one point because somebody asked if I might be help to help out. It turned out that “help out” didn’t mean that weekend, it meant help out the startup that already existed and needed additional people to work for free. No thanks. In contrast, Garrett was on the know n show team. If he did any recruiting beyond the poster and a few tweets, I didn’t see it.

]]>By: Kyle Mulkahttp://blog.kylemulka.com/2009/09/my-thoughts-on-startup-weekend-redmond/comment-page-1/#comment-91069
Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:40:52 +0000http://blog.kylemulka.com/?p=515#comment-91069@Roy:
I too wish to accomplish things at Startup Weekend(s). When I said random ideas, I don’t mean ideas that are pointless or ideas that aren’t deserving of being tried. I just mean new ideas that just might be crazy and simple enough to work. Ideas where you wouldn’t want to spend more than a weekend to see if they are going to work or not. If you did want to spend more than a weekend, there are plenty of other ways you could work on those ideas.

I do like to learn new things, but I don’t think I’m the type of person who learns well by working with others. I feel I learn new things best on my own, working on my own projects, reading the documentation, and trying things as I go. I can totally understand people who’d like to use Startup Weekend as a chance to learn new things, I just don’t think I’m one of them.

“I didn’t see people trying to recruit people to join pre-existing companies.”
You must not have seen this or this?

@Garrett:

“groups that get funding and actually form into real companies” – That could be cool, but I think it is unlikely to happen with groups that have just met each other. In a startup, team chemistry is very important, and the likelihood of a team formed over a weekend having good chemistry isn’t very high.

]]>By: Garretthttp://blog.kylemulka.com/2009/09/my-thoughts-on-startup-weekend-redmond/comment-page-1/#comment-91068
Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:02:34 +0000http://blog.kylemulka.com/?p=515#comment-91068Ok, aside from awards, the real winners from startup weekend are the groups that get funding and actually form into real companies. Prize money aside, the only company there that got landed a deal with venture capitalists (that I know of) was Search Kick. Is it a coincidence that they also won the prize money? I think not.

A businesses’ success is not a popularity contest, which is the only thing that the iPhone app won.

]]>By: Roy Lebanhttp://blog.kylemulka.com/2009/09/my-thoughts-on-startup-weekend-redmond/comment-page-1/#comment-91066
Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:21:38 +0000http://blog.kylemulka.com/?p=515#comment-91066Thanks for your thoughts, Kyle, but I respectfully disagree. Your goal may be to implement random ideas, but that’s your goal, not the point of Startup Weekend. People walk into Startup Weekends with many different agendas. My own goal is to learn something and accomplish something.

As I’ve said elsewhere, the prize money didn’t factor into it for me. I decided to go with Azure Friday night because of the opportunity to have Azure experts around to ask questions of. I certainly didn’t feel any restrictions. I don’t think the competition aspect hurt this one. Overall, the event was way better than the last one. I didn’t meet a single person who brought an already-existing project that they were trying to find people to work on for the weekend. I didn’t see people trying to recruit people to join pre-existing companies. And there were fewer people who didn’t join a team and just wandered around for the weekend. I met a lot of new people and I had worked with six people who I had never worked with before.

On the voting, I was surprised we voted at all — at the outset, I was expecting the BizSpark folks to pick a winner just like H-Farm did and I have no problem with them making whatever requirements they want. Undoubtedly H-Farm had their own set of requirements — they just didn’t publicize them. As it turns out, at SF Startup Weekend last weekend, there was a spontaneous investment from the audience during the demos. Pretty cool!

The MSFT sponsorship was not perfect. The presentations on Friday night were a waste of time — I would have loved to see code which would have helped us on Saturday, but instead we got marketing talks. Kevin Leneway (a smart guy) showed us a video geared toward people who’d never heard of cloud computing when he could have walked us through building Hello World on Azure. And the demo of multi-touch was a complete non-sequitur. Cool, yes. Relevant, no. I, for one, would love to see pre-weekend code clinics from Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc. to help people who come with the same objective as me — to try new technologies and to learn.

Dan, in my opinion, Startup Weekend should not be a competition. If it turns into a competition, people will start to plan things in advance, gather a team in advance, pick a project in advance, etc. That’s not the point. The point is to meet new people, work with them, try to see if you can implement random ideas in a weekend. Or, at least that’s what I think it should be about.

]]>By: Zanehttp://blog.kylemulka.com/2009/09/my-thoughts-on-startup-weekend-redmond/comment-page-1/#comment-91064
Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:23:53 +0000http://blog.kylemulka.com/?p=515#comment-91064Also, one thing that hasn’t been said is that it was quite clear (and announced) from the start that to be eligible for the $5k BizSpark money teams would have to use MSFT technology. Why do you think 14/15 teams used the MS stack? Not a random coincidence. The iPhone team either didn’t fully understand this, or made a decision at some point to ignore it.

It was definitely something that my team did talk about and we decided to stay in the running by using Azure instead of AWS.

]]>By: Julienhttp://blog.kylemulka.com/2009/09/my-thoughts-on-startup-weekend-redmond/comment-page-1/#comment-91063
Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:47:01 +0000http://blog.kylemulka.com/?p=515#comment-91063actually there were 3 prizes: MS, the one from the local angel association, and the audience vote.

Search Kick, by coincidence, won the first two. (and left with 10K, which is amazing)

Learn That Name, the iphone app, won the third one.

Nobody was disqualified. we did not want to force people to use our tools, but it s also important for us to reward a project who has the potential to become a future partner for us. We seriously hope they will create a company.

]]>By: jeffhttp://blog.kylemulka.com/2009/09/my-thoughts-on-startup-weekend-redmond/comment-page-1/#comment-91061
Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:47:47 +0000http://blog.kylemulka.com/?p=515#comment-91061Well, they werent “disqualified”, they just chose to give prize money to whomever they thought was deserving. They could have given it to the team with the most people, the team with the neatest logo, or drawn at random. Since it was their money, and there were no formal contest-type rules to start, I think its entirely up to them.
]]>By: Dan Cyrhttp://blog.kylemulka.com/2009/09/my-thoughts-on-startup-weekend-redmond/comment-page-1/#comment-91060
Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:40:44 +0000http://blog.kylemulka.com/?p=515#comment-91060I’m surprised microsoft thought it necessary to reject the winner on those grounds. You think they’d just provide their brand name it for the press and not the actual results. What’s wrong with prize money?
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